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Religion and Schools

Maryam Namazie joins Richard Dawkins, Schools Select Committee chairman Barry Sheerman, and others on a debate regarding religion and schools on January 17, 2008 on Teachers TV. To see the one hour programme, click here. Maryam comes on in the final section of the programme.

Hello,I didn’t watch the whole show as it is really irksome. Probably I will throw up if I hear someone talks about “values” once more. With running the risk of sounding like antique dealer, I urge readers to read Marx’s “On the Jewish Question” again and again:“…Of course, in periods when the political state as such is born violently out of civil society, when political liberation is the form in which men strive to achieve their liberation, the state can and must go as far as the abolition of religion, the destruction of religion. But it can do so only in the same way that it proceeds to the abolition of private property, to the maximum, to confiscation, to progressive taxation, just as it goes as far as the abolition of life, the guillotine. At times of special self-confidence, political life seeks to suppress its prerequisite, civil society and the elements composing this society, and to constitute itself as the real species-life of man, devoid of contradictions. But, it can achieve this only by coming into violent contradiction with its own conditions of life, only by declaring the revolution to be permanent, and, therefore, the political drama necessarily ends with the re-establishment of religion, private property, and all elements of civil society, just as war ends with peace.…Hence, man was not freed from religion, he received religious freedom. He was not freed from property, he received freedom to own property. He was not freed from the egoism of business, he received freedom to engage in business.”In respect to the question of education and religion, or education in general, our sole responsibility is to teach the next generations the genuine philosophical method that enables them to establish their own thinking. If I had children, I wouldn’t ever bother so much to educate them on Marxism. But it is more than probable that I would strive to equip them with dialectics.Best Regards

Hi Mehmet Çagatay,I have to say that I didn’t like that quote from Marx.I don’t believe one can or should aim to destroy religion.Isn’t that just imposing your will on others?Isn’t that the same as the Islamists imposing their will on others?What is the difference?